Food Police: A Rat in the Kitchen

Asian food writer Fred Ferretti has a New Year's resolution: Demand authentic Chinese food. He wrote an op-ed titled "A Rat in the Kitchen" in the New York Times this Saturday. The problem is that authentic does not equal good. And as we have noted here and as blogger Jennifer Lee has asked in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, what is authentic Chinese food anyway? Ferrett tells us that no substitutions can be used for a food to be considered "authentic," but as Lee writes:

What is great about Chinese food is that it is flexible and adapts to the ingredients at hand. Broccoli in America, frog legs in France, lamb (but not pork) in the Middle East. If you don’t have taro, why not use sweet potatoes? If you don’t have bok choy, why not use lettuce. If you don’t have rice vinegar, why not use apple vinegar? Yes, it’s not what you might get in China itself, but sometimes the adapations (sic) solidify and become their own authentic thing.

Two curious claims come up in Ferretti's manifesto. Here is the first:

In the last year, I have read that there are five, six or eight great regional traditions of Chinese cooking. In fact, there are four, always and ever four.

Always and ever? Is anything really that fixed? And if you traveled to these four regions, would you really get agreement from the chefs on that number? In my experience, it is usually, "Around here, we do it this way, but the people down the road do it differently."

The second claim is that the "bastardized" food that we eat in "Chinese restaurants" is the fault of Chinese men:

The Chinese who sailed to the Golden Mountain of America to lay the ties and tracks of the transcontinental railroad were all men. In this womanless society, these workers ate a food of survival; unfamiliar ingredients were cooked in rudimentary Chinese fashion. This coarsened cookery is what evolved into the Chinese-American genre. It is bastardized food, prepared first to feed a worker and then to please an American palate that dotes upon overcooked vegetables and sauces thickened with cornstarch and sugar.

That poor, bastardized food with only fathers to raise it--all alone in the world. Would someone please think of the food? This paragraph is a real doozy. Ferretti is saying that men are to blame for bastard food that "dotes" on the American desire for "overcooked vegetables." Are any of these things true? Dudes, I know a lot of great male chefs. In some parts--Asia included--men are even considered better at cooking. And as an American, I can say, I don't desire overcooked vegetables. Cobb salad, a great American invention, has no overcooked veggies.

I agree that the food eaten in China is different from that eaten at Chinese restaurants in the rest of the world. In fact, the first time I traveled to China, I said, "Now I understand what all the fuss about Chinese food is about." But to call a food "bastardized" or "authentic" is meaningless.

Dudes, I have a suggestion: This year, let's demand "good" food.

No overcooked veggies here. Photo of Cobb salad from Jerry's Famous Deli. Public domain.